The present invention relates to a multicore fiber and a method of manufacture of the multicore fiber, and is preferred to the case where the options of selecting a communication waveband are increased.
Presently, an optical fiber for use in a generally popular optical fiber communication system has a structure in which a single core is enclosed with a cladding and an optical signal is propagated through this core to transmit information.
In the optical fiber communication system in these years, a large number of optical fibers ranging from a few tens to a few hundreds optical fibers are used, and the volume of information transmitted are dramatically increased. In order to reduce the number of optical fibers in such an optical fiber communication system, such a multicore fiber is proposed in which a plurality of cores is enclosed with a cladding.
For example, Patent Document 1 below proposes a multicore fiber having a structure in which a plurality of cores is arranged side by side on a single linear line and the cores are entirely enclosed with a cladding.